Back from England

Arrived back in Canada last evening after a very stimulating and interesting trip to England – two speeches, lots of questions and interviews.

First thanks to the over 250 CA readers who chipped in to support the trip. I ended up not simply with my trip paid for, but a nice appearance fee.

Second, thanks to David Holland and to Josh of Cartoons by Josh (and particularly to their wives, Kate and Liz), each of who billeted me for 3 nights. I don’t think that I’ve ever billeted with anyone before. One of the drawbacks of business travel in hotels (which isn’t usually to conferences) is that you spend a lot of time by yourself and it can be a bit lonely. Also thanks to Richard Drake for arranging a couple of interesting meetings. I was fun to have excellent company throughout.

Also thanks to the organizers of the two presentations – the Guardian and the Global Warming Foundation. Both were gracious hosts. The Guardian representatives were very impressed by the generosity of CA readers in contributing to my expenses. I thanked them for not paying my expenses as CA readers were far more generous than they would have been. (Like all newspapers, they are under severe financial constraints, and, in their shoes, I wouldn’t have paid my expenses either.)

I checked into the blogs briefly from time to time but haven’t posted or commented for a week. I paid attention to one observer’s helpful suggestion following the GWF speech and used the lectern at the Guardian panel the next day. He was right. I’m amazed by Anthony’s stamina in keeping up trip reports from Australia, as I generally had no energy left by the end of the day to even think about making reports.

The trip was occasioned by the Guardian’s decision to convene a panel discussion following the release of the report from the Muir Russell inquiry – only a few weeks after a convening a panel on the release of Fred Pearce’s book documenting his more diligent inquiry into Climategate. I had decided to make the trip only on July 2. The Muir Russell report was released on the morning of Wednesday, July 7 (with its supplementary information later in the day). I left on Saturday, July 10 and spent most of the few days digesting the Muir Russell report and getting ready for the trip. It takes me quite a bit of time and concentration to organize speeches. It’s not like I have one stump speech that I can give over and over (amortizing the prep effort, so to speak). In this case, the inquiries were the topic of interest and this was new territory for presentation effort, especially, Muir Russell, where I’d only done a couple of blog posts scratching the surface. Thus, I was preoccupied right up to both presentations, editing and re-editing right up to show time in each case.

Other than prepping for my two appearances, I didn’t do much writing or notetaking during my trip. On Monday, Thursday and Friday, I’d arranged for a number of meetings and interviews (which were mostly background meetings and not ones that I plan to document.) So I was busy all week.

One major regret of the trip is that I didn’t get to really spend time with the many Climate Audit readers that attended the two presentations. Many readers came to say hello after the presentations, but, in each case, I was whisked off by organizers of the occasion to post-event get-togethers. While these occasions were fun, if I do this sort of trip again, I’ll try to arrange a venue where CA is, in effect, the host, and my obligation is to readers, rather than hosts.

London is, of course, a very gracious city to visit. Just that I ended up being pretty busy for the entire trip and didn’t do any sightseeing, other than choosing to sometimes walk from place to place. Billeting also meant that I got more of the perspective of living in the London area if you don’t start your day from a downtown hotel. You have to get from your house to a train station – the number of people using trains is large enough that service is very frequent. Then half an hour or so to one of the hub train stations – in my case, Euston for the first half, Waterloo for the second half. Then, transfer to the tube, which typically gets you to about a 10-minute walk from you want to go. Then, walk. In Toronto, business offices are typically located right by a subway stop, so, even if you take the subway downtown, you don’t walk as much as London, where the offices are lower rise and seldom accessible without the standard 10-minute walk.

On Thursday and Friday, I had a little extra time and walked to/from Waterloo to some destinations – about 25-40 minutes depending on whether I (shall-we-say) detoured or not. The weather was ideal for walking – low 20s deg C and partly cloudy. London streetscapes along Regent St to Piccadilly Circus, to Trafalgar Square to the Strand and across to the South Bank are the sort of thing that I like to do as a tourist, so even going from place to place was not necessarily a chore.

I’ll post on the presentations separately, but wanted first to thank my hosts.

47 Comments

Sir, you are both a very courteous and diligent man. I hope that you live in good health and happiness to beyond 100 years! Your concern for what is correct, expecially with regard to these very important issues of global importance and consequence today, is commendable. I am very much looking forward to your next postings!

Confirmation from Trevor Davis at the debate, that Muir Russell had only met with Phil Jones before the panel was formed, was very interesting..

The Times correspondent, right in front of me, said that this was Shocking… Not sure if the audio recording picked up on that…

The Times has an interesting article today: (I think from the same correspondent,as at the debate)

US halts funds for climate unit – Sunday Times – 18th July 2010-pg3

The Times website has gone behind a paywall…..so,

“The Americal Government has suspended its funding of the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit (CRU), citing the scientific doubts raised by last Novembers’s leak of hundreds of stolen emails.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) was one of the unit’s main sources of funding for its work asembling a database of global temperatures…

it continues…

“The DoE peer review panel will now sift through the (Muir Russell) report and decide if American taxpayers should continue to fund the unit.”

———————————
My thoughts:
Perhaps someone in the USA could advice the DoE of the many and varied criticisms of the Muir Russell review. Not least that it was a total whitewash, documented at Climate Audit.

As outlined by Steve Mcintyre at the Guardian debate on climategate in London on Wednesday the 14th July 2010, that Muir Russell had only met with Phil Jones (head of unit) before the panel had been formed and the inquiry started. The Times correspondent asked Trevor Davis (UEA) to confirm whether this wa sthe case, and Trevor Davis, eventually said Phil Jones met Muir Russell in January.. The panel convened in February..

Another criticism being, Muir Russell had not even contacted Steve Mcintyre, or a number of the other critics of CRU, let alone interviewed any of the critics of CRU discussed many times in the emails, whose complaints about data openess led to Illegal (in face of FOI request) deleteions of emails relating to IPCC AR4…

These emails were between CRU and other scientists, includin senior ‘climate science’ American scientists, so presumably funding for these American scientists should be looked at by the DoE’s peer review panel as well to be fiar to CRU who were just one party of the emails.

Perhaps, as part of their review of Muir Russell, the DoE should request all correspondence from the American scientists that were communicating and working with CRU scientists, as both sets of scientists were co-authors and worked closely in the same ‘climate’ field and both very involved in the IPCC process. Including the emails regarding AR4, that the climategate emails state were deleted.

It’s behind a paywall at The Times, but the Global Warming Policy Foundation have it:

Re advice to the DoE, I suggest a reference to the current New Scientist leader might be useful. No one could claim the NS is a pro sceptic source. Referring to the three UK reports, it says this: “none looked at the quality of the science itself”; and this: “Data manipulation is the stuff of science, but that manipulation has to be as open and transparent as the data itself”, and this: “… the failure to investigate whether emails were deleted to prevent their release under freedom of information laws, makes it harder to accept Russell’s conclusion that the “rigour and honesty” of the scientists concerned are not in doubt” … and more – especially this:

“But what happened to intellectual candour – especially in conceding the shortcomings of these inquiries and discussing the way that science is done. Without candour, public trust in climate science cannot be restored, nor should it be.”

Steve’s assessment: “Like all newspapers, they are under severe financial constraints” is mostly self inflicted.

The MSM’s refusal to cover the Climategate as news and their meager treatment of the facts unveiling, prompted me last December was the final “signal” to quit the Los Angeles Times and cancel my subscription to the Time Magazine after years of support. I decided since they were only providing “noise”, it was time to get my news from other sources I believe reflect a complete and accurate picture and am happy with my decision. MSM’s demise of readership is a direct result of editorial policies from agenda driven philosophies. Perhaps some day they will wake up and become great sources of vital information again about what’s going on worthy of my support. Unfortunately I’m afraid the editors simply do not see this connection and are in denial.

Although they deserve this, I am do wonder if cutting those funds would be a good thing. One thing that the Climategate emails revealed was that the people there did have misgivings about the hockey stick, and even voiced those concerns.

It is, of course, to their eternal discredit that they eventually caved to “peer pressure” and the political agenda and eventually just shut up on the subject.

The temperature tracking results also seem to be amongst the most reliable when compared to the others in the field. They are, of course, biased by the “corrections” applied to the data set they use, and judging from the code released by the climategate files don’t seem above at least considering some fairly brutal “adjustments” themselves.

However, of the bunch, they are the least blatantly biased which is why I have reservations about completely defunding them. Some “adult supervision” as a condition of funding may be more appropriate.

I see no reason for DoE to vary from “inquiries have exonerated the CRU,” and thereby resume CRU funding. That is simple and plausible. An alternative path would require significantly more effort and at least one strong viewpoint contra CRU.

At the Guardian meeting, everyone was saying, more openess, transparency, talk about the uncertainties, Bob Watson, Trevor Davis agreeing/saying that ‘sceptical voices should be heard, IPCC review acknowledges this, etc. That the peer review process not being used to supress research..

And Bob came across as very sincere.. (I don’t doubt Bob)

Perhaps someone should tell the journals…
I read this WSJ article, and missed something, that The Air Vent picked up on…

Pat Michaels:
“Climate Research and several other journals have stopped accepting anything that substantially challenges the received wisdom on global warming perpetuated by the CRU. I have had four perfectly good manuscripts rejected out of hand since the CRU shenanigans, and I’m hardly the only one. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, has noted that it’s becoming nearly impossible to publish anything on global warming that’s nonalarmist in peer-reviewed journals.”

The Air Vent’s thoughts:
“Blocking of papers that came to different conclusions from climate journals was one of the central issues of climategate. The conspiracy to block certain views was openly discussed in the emails, of course the ‘review’ panels couldn’t seem to read them, but whatever.”

>>
Confirmation from Trevor Davis at the debate, that Muir Russell had only met with Phil Jones before the panel was formed, was very interesting..
>>

Interesting but not surprising.

He had almost certainly reached the conclusions he was required to reach before announcing the panel as well.

The 200,000 USD fee is very enlightening.

I’m sure Steve could collate some data and run the fortran gridding code for a lot less !

THIS may be the real reason for the secrecy. They are getting 200 grand for a couple of days work and did not want anyone to see how piffling the job was.

Interesting to note that UEA says they are not paid to do archiving (so throwing away raw data is not a problem). So this basically is just for gridding and making results available to the Met. Office any others.

Seriously , maybe Steve could put in an offer.

I can’t think of anyone who has established a more thorough, honest and objective reputation for this sort of work.

In fact seeing the huge figures on some of the tenders what were exposed in the emails, there is a huge financial pressure for the university to appoint some sympathetic, ex-college researcher to do the “independent” inquiry and to carefully step around any issues they may be contentious.

Just to make sure he was “independent” they gave him a list of the papers they wanted him to look at (an hence implicitly those to avoid).

Steve, did you talked to George Monbiot in some depth? I have a feeling that by appearing in person it’ll make things easier in order to come to a meaningful and 2 sided discussion rather than demonizing the opposite side.

Steve: George and I had had a nice discussion when he was in Canada last November, but didn’t connect this visit unfortunately. I did have some good discussions with others, that I’m not going to discuss online.

I know this is OT, but can anyone tell me if Jones did actually lose the raw (unadjusted) temperature data as he initially claimed. Sorry but in all the to and fro of the last few months I have lost track of this issue.

Thanks. But since the CRU global time series is the same (more or less) as the GISSTemp, does this mean that the GISSTemp is using the same raw data as the “lost” data except for different UHI and other adjustments/calculations or is it a completely different raw data set. Also, other than trawl through blog posts and comments, is there an easy way to lookup bits of information like this.

A pleasure to help out an honest man.Slightly OT is there a current compilation of the science supporting AWG? As in emperical, replicated studies, data ect?Too many of the claims of science based evidence are empty opinion pieces.And far too many referrence back to the IPCC.What data stands?I ask cause I find myself drifting into an antagonistic attitude to most all climate alarm claims.Environment Canada assures me they use only the best science (From the IPCC).But I asked for the evidence upon which they base their policies.It seems they cannot/will not list their sources.Pretty poor show from our experts so far.In the interests of attempting an open mind, help. JRR

You are not alone. In the UK, all enquiries to our government Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) refer to the IPCC for evidence that climate change is man-made. They refuse to say exactly what the evidence is or where it can be found in the IPCC reports.

I’m flattered and delighted that you read my post about the gwpf gig, and took some notice of my suggestions. I’m glad you thought that the lectern worked for you at the Climategate appearance. It certainly came over better to me.

And I’m glad you enjoyed your visit to UK. I hope it’ll be a regular stopover for you…there is much work to be done in this country!

I contacted Tim Osborn. He was away from Mon to Thurs in Boulton’s Edinburgh at a conference on Statistical Climatology (convened by Gabi Hegerl and to which, in the new spiritness of openness, I hadn’t been invited). On Friday, he said, in effect, that he was busy clipping his toenails and reading the newspaper.

That Statistical Climatology thing seems to be roughly every three years (last two in 2007 and 2004).

In their hearts, I don’t think they’ve really gotten past the idea that they can marginalize their critics by the recursive method of keeping them “out of the club” as much as possible and then pointing at that as proof they aren’t credible.

It’s the childrens “The man with the power” chant applied by childish academics.

Do you know the man?
What man?
The man with the power.
What power?
The power of voodoo.
Who do?
You do.
Do what?
Know the man.
What man?
The man with the power. . .

In another vital climate news story last week, The New York Times environmental journalist Andrew Revkin was interviewed about climategate – and the alleged lack thereof – on the American “Beeb,” National Public Radio by their science correspondent Ira Flato, in “Climate Scientists Move Forward After Scandal-Revkin.”

The screech of minimizing damage from the scandal as per the British Inquiries would not be brooked! AGW critics and skeptics are the equivalent of Young Earthers who cannot be moved to Believe in evolution by any mountain of evidence; the rest are conspiracy mongers.

Needless to say, no evidence was offered; nor were any climategate emails quoted or discussed in a program purportedly about them. And the Hockey Stick was minimized to one defect (“error bars”), which I attempted to redress in an online comment.

Perhaps the most anoying comment from Revkin was an ‘ends justifies the means’ explanation for misbehavior and scientists turned political advocates. Although he mentions the IPPCs new lead author for AR5, Chris Field by name and a politico.com story, he may well have had James Hansen in mind as well – I know I did.

Does he really mean science fudging, hiding data, and group-think dogmas are OK if the cause is ‘Right’?

“Mr. REVKIN: Yeah. I mean, to me, one of the real problems that really has emerged, you know, in covering this so long – I mean, you and I both, we -getting to be graybeards in this realm – that I think that many scientists have gotten very frustrated with the lack of traction for the – they see this body of information building and the public isn’t moving and policymakers, or the treaty makers, are just sort of sitting on their hands. And there’s this growing sense of frustration. So that has led, for sure, sometimes, to oversimplification. And to scientists, also, increasingly getting into the advocacy realm, you know, not just telling what is, but telling us what we should do.”

Congratulations to Steve on a great visit to Britain. I hope you come again. And it seems the Guardian, long regarded as the most alarmist UK newspaper, also deserves credit.

@Robin Guenier,
Thanks for the link to the New Scientist editorial.
I’ve read NS for many, many years but I’ve now stopped buying it for the obvious reason.
Several years ago I did send several letters. Not surprisingly, they didn’t print any, but I was fairly impressed by the fact that one of their editors did write a proper reply, and then entered into a small amount of discussion, e.g. about the hockey stick. At least they were willing to talk to someone who was clearly leaning toward the sceptical side.
And now this editorial. There’s hardly a thing in it I could disagree with. In fact, it’s quite extraordinary. But just one criticism. It’s a little late in the day for them to realise that the honesty and oppenness of science needs defending. To pursue such a one-sided and biased policy over some years is nothing short of disgraceful.
It’s probably never going to happen, but it would be great if, some time i the coming years, they print an apology to their readers. Then I’ll start to buy NS again….
Chris

Your experience with NS exactly mirrors mine. Many letters written to them, none published, then a cancelled subscription explaining to them exactly why. It will take more than an apology to get me back as a reader.

Steve, thanks for all the effort on behalf of mankind. The mass hysteria is at least now in some small deceleration mode. I am looking forward to a similar face-to-face with teh all knowing Dr. Pachauiri. Kindly remember to send me an invitation for that one. I would pay my way there

Glad you had a good time in the UK. You might be intersted in this interview with Professor Sir David King, former Chief Government Scientific Advisor, on the Kate Silverton Show on Sunday. He was very disparaging about climate scepticism. In particular, he claimed that there were now super-accurate satellite temperature measurements which showed beyond doubt that the earth is currently warming. Be interested to know what you think. Interview is about 36 minutes in, after the news. Programme available until 25th July. See link below. All the best and keep at it.http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t32sc/Kate_Silverton_18_07_2010/

If Barry Wood’s comment is aimed at me, I should clarify. I’ve gathered that it is generally accepted that the earth has been cooling for the past decade. Prof King claimed that new methods of accurate measurement show this to untrue. I know the more important question is whether the climate change is man made, but we cannot decide that if we don’t know precisely how hot the earth is.

Andrei Illarionov, former chief science adviser to President Putin:
… in respect to the presentation made by representatives of the so-called official team of the British government and the official British climate science, or at least how they introduced themselves at the seminar. I personally was surprised by the exceptionally poor content of the papers presented…
Simultaneously, they revealed an absolute—and I stress, absolute inability to answer questions concerning the alleged professional activities of the authors of these papers. Not only the ten questions that were published nine months ago, but not a single question asked during this two-day seminar by participants in the seminar, both Russian and foreign, were answered.
When it became clear that they could not provide a substantive answer to a question, three devices were used… The British participants insisted on introducing censorship during the holding of this seminar. The chief science adviser to the British government, Mr. King, demanded in the form of an ultimatum at the beginning of yesterday that the program of the seminar be changed and he presented an ultimatum demanding that about two-third of the participants not be given the floor.The participants in the seminar who had been invited by the Russian Academy of Sciences, they have been invited by the president of the Academy of Sciences Yuri Sergeyevich Osipov. Mr. King spoke about “undesirable” scientists and undesirable participants in the seminar. He declared that if the old program is preserved, he would not take part in the seminar and walk out taking along with him all the other British participants.
He has prepared his own program which he proposed, it is available here and my colleagues can simply distribute Mr. King’s hand-written program to change the program prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences and sent out in advance to all the participants in the seminar.
A comparison of the real program prepared by the Academy of Science and the program proposed as an ultimatum by Mr. King will give us an idea of what scientists, from the viewpoint of the chief scientific adviser to the British government, are undesirable. In the course of negotiations on this issue Mr. King said that he had contacted the British Foreign Secretary Mr. Straw who was in Moscow at the time and with the office of the British Prime Minister, Blair, so that the corresponding executives in Britain should contact the corresponding officials in Russia to bring pressure on the Russian Academy of Sciences and the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences to change the seminar’s program.When the attempt to introduce censorship at the Russian Academy of Sciences failed, other attempts were made to disrupt the seminar. At least four times during the course of the seminar ugly scenes were staged that prevented the seminar from proceeding normally. As a result we lost at least four hours of working time in order to try to solve these problems.
During these events Mr. King cited his conversations with the office of the British Prime Minister and had got clearance for such actions.
And thirdly, when the more or less normal work of the seminar was restored and when the opportunity for discussion presented itself, when questions on professional topics were asked, and being unable to answer these questions, Mr. King and other members of the delegation, turned to flight, as happened this morning when Mr. King, in an unprecedented incident, cut short his answer to a question in mid sentence realizing that he was unable to answer it and left the seminar room. It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government and the reputation of the title “Sir” has sustained heavy damage.